


Muggle Lives Matter

by oxnate



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Calling it like I see it, Defund the Aurors, Make Magic Great Again, Muggle Lives Matter, Political, Political Satire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxnate/pseuds/oxnate
Summary: Political satire.  Rather heavy handed this time.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Do not own Harry Potter. By reading this, you agree not to sue the author of this work.
> 
> A/N: Any similarity to events past or present is purely coincidental. 
> 
> Keep comments civil.

* * *

Chapter 1.

“Are those... muggles protecting the Death Eaters?” Hermione Granger asked, nonplussed, as she watched the implausible scene in front of her unfold. 

In the middle of Diagon Alley, a group of about 100 muggles (you could tell by their clothes) were marching and holding signs saying things like “Muggle Lives Matter,” “All Aurors Are Assholes,” and “Defund the Aurors.” In and among them were about two dozen masked Death Eaters. Every so often one of the Death Eaters would send off a spell at a nearby shop, breaking windows or setting things on fire. Some of the younger (college age) muggles would also dart out to spray paint rude slogans before hiding among the crowd again.

Nearby, a group of Aurors stood around doing... nothing.

“I’m afraid so, Miss Granger,” the grandfatherly voice of Albus Dumbledore told her from her right. “It seems there was a fight between Death Eaters and Aurors yesterday and a muggle was killed in the crossfire. Worse, it seems that Lucius Malfoy is as silver-tongued as ever. He convinced the muggles that the Aurors were to blame. Had they simply let the Death Eaters go or not chased them when they ran, then naturally, no one would have died.”

“That’s stupid. Aurors can’t just let criminals go,” Hermione insisted. “Especially not when they catch them red-handed. And of course no one questioned that no one would have died had the Death Eaters been innocent either. But don’t Death Eaters hate muggles? Why aren’t they killing them?”

“Ah, this you may be even better suited than I to understand. You may have perhaps studied the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin in your muggle schooling? The phrase “useful idiots” is often attributed to one or both of them.”

“Then why aren’t we simply telling them to stop shielding Death Eaters? Just tell them what kind of horrible people they are!”

“We tried, of course, but it did not work. I will quote another muggle philosopher to answer that. Sadly, it is far easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled in the first place,” Dumbledore replied.

Hermione sighed. “And Fudge is a _useless_ idiot who’s doing nothing.”

It was Dumbledore’s turn to sigh. “If only. He has done much worse than that. He ordered the Aurors to stand down, almost certainly on Malfoy’s _suggestion_.”

A great crash was heard as Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor was the next business targeted. Hooting and laughter came from the rioters/protesters.

“What do we do?” Hermione whined.

“For now, I’m not sure what we _can_ do. Gringotts and Hogwarts are both safe. Gringotts has their own security and no compunctions about harming ‘innocent’ muggles. And six Death Eaters that tried to burn down Hogwarts are currently being held in the Hogwarts’ dungeons despite the minister’s objections. Relax my dear, the muggles guarding them were sent on their way, unharmed.

“And should the Ministry or Fudge’s own house be attacked, I believe he’d have no choice but to act then.

“But in the meantime, the Aurors do not wish to risk their jobs so long as no one’s lives are in danger, and the rioters make enough noise for innocent people to escape, so the only deaths so far have been muggles accidentally killing other muggles. And until Fudge-”

“Wait,” Hermione interrupted, horrified. “Muggles killed muggles? Was there any investigation?”

The headmaster waved off her concerns. “Muggles are always killing muggles, my dear. It’s in their nature. Mostly savages, I’m afraid. Besides, the deaths were probably accidental, so we’ll just let the muggle authorities deal with it and never speak of them again. Good. It’s why we segregated ourselves in the first place with the Statute of Secrecy.”

If Hermione had thought she was horrified before, every word out of Albus’s mouth seemed to drop her mouth open more.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

“That’s- That’s outrageous!” Hermione fumed, throwing down the newspaper in disgust.

“Dare I ask?” a sleepy Sirius asked as he sipped his tea.

“Front page,” Hermione waved to the paper, refusing to soil her hands by touching it again.

“Wandless-Muggle spelled in back by Aurors.” Sirius winced at the headline. No good could come from this with the way things were right now. Even assuming it was true. This was printed in the Daily Profit after all; there was less than a 50% of anything printed there being true, but a 100% chance of them printing something sensational to try to stir up the public (and their sales).

“The man had a gun!” Hermione informed him.

“That’s one of those ‘fire-leg’ things, right?” he asked, taking another sip of tea to hide his smile as he teased her. As if he didn’t know about guns.

“'Firearms.’ And yes, they fire a number of preloaded piercing spells.” She took the paper back and started re-reading. “And yes, it looks like he was shooting as he ran away, but that just makes him more dangerous. He could have easily hit a bystander.”

“Why were they trying to arrest him in the first place?” Harry asked.

“Statute of Secrecy. He was drunk and stumbled into Diagon Alley.”

“See, they should have just hit him with a silencing spell and let him go,” Ron said. At least that’s what everyone though he said around his half-chewed breakfast.

Hermione rubbed her temples to ward off the headache she felt coming on every time she argued with Ron or other idiots. “They’re not _allowed_ to let him go, Ronald. That’s the law. They’re required to hold him until the Obliviatiors arrive and determine he’s no longer a threat.”

“Yeah, but they spelled him in the back!” countered Ron, this time without food in his mouth, for once.

“It’s irrelevant,” Snape interjected before the two could start another shouting match. “Historically, Aurors have been used to suppress muggle uprisings in the 1400s. Muggles understand this on an instinctive level. That makes Aurors blatantly anti-muggle today.”

“That’s right!” Colin Creevey added. How he got into Headquarters or why wasn’t known or important right now. All that’s important is that he’s a muggle-born other than Hermione. “Me mum warned me about them on my first trip to the Alley. We were buying our supplies before first year and she wandered off. She was about to wander down Knockturn Alley and an Auror stopped her and questioned her for no reason! She was so mad afterwards. It was blatant discrimination!”

“Did he arrest her?”

“Well no.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he told her that she shouldn’t go down that alley dressed like a muggle.” Creevey said. “Hermione, are you saying that muggle lives don’t matter?”

“What? Of course not!”

Snape decided to get back to making his point. “Recently there have many intense protests and protesters have demanded, among other things, significant changes to the Auror corps. Naturally the fact that people are protesting the Aurors means there must be something wrong and in need of changing. We need to _discuss_ ,” he hissed the end of the word to accentuate that he was talking about having a discussion and not wanting to throw a circular disk more than 7 inches (18 cm) in diameter and 2.2 pounds (1 kg) in weight, usually wooden with a metal rim and thicker in the center than at the edge, for throwing for distance in athletic competition. “Whether it might be time to disband the Aurors after all if they’re going to go around cursing innocent muggles in the back.”

“There are only two kinds of people calling for the defunding of the Aurors: Criminals and idiots they’ve duped. Whatever our differences, Snivelous, I don’t think you’re an idiot.” Sirius snot back.

“Sirius is clearly confounded. Or perhaps just not woke enough yet,” Snape stated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m being more blatant about the paper name than Rowling.
> 
> A/N2: “Discuss” vs “discus.” When you don’t have logic, reason, or facts or your side; attack their spelling. I made sure to get it right this time.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

Alastor Moody clomped through Grimmauld Place and collapsed in a chair, throwing his hat across the table.

“Tough day?” Hermione asked as their literal slave, Kreacher, served tea to the returning aurors.

“Not sure yet,” Moody said as he took his tea. “We were trying to quell the riots in the Kenosha neighborhood of Hogsmeade.

“Wait, Hogsmeade has neighborhoods?” Hermione interrupted.

“Of course,” Tonks answered. “It’s the main wizarding settlement in Great Britain. If it only had a few score houses, that would be terrible world building. Why, the wizarding population would be functionally extinct.”

“As I was saying, we were patrolling Kenosha since that lily-livered Fudge told the aurors to stand down and let it burn. We weren’t going to let that happen. ...again.”

Hermione nodded. Death Eaters had burned a lot of homes and businesses before the Order of the Phoenix had realized that the magical government really had no intention of ever even trying to stop the Death Eaters and their useful idiots. 

Part of the stand down order may or may not have been due to a new spell. Avada Kadoculua was a green spell that destroyed eyes irreparably. It was a green spell and looked and sounded in the casting a lot like Avada Kadavra. There were two theories in the order as to why that spell was being cast at each riot. The spell damage was irreparable but not lethal. One theory was that the rioters were trying to take out good aurors without provoking a lethal response. Several dozen auror were on medical leave thanks to this green spell. The other theory was that the rioters were _trying_ to provoke a lethal response. By using a horrible, but non-lethal, curse; they hoped to spin the aurors eventual, inevitable response as an over-reaction.

“Do you know Kyle Shunpike?”

“Would he be related to Stan Shunpike?” Harry asked.

“Aye, his brother. But Kyle’s only 16 and that’s important. Unfortunately. no one told us this. Probably because we’d’ve told him to go home.”

Hermione’s mind raced. “Only 16, that means he’s too young to apparate legally.”

“That was part of it, for sure. Too young, too brave, and too goodhearted for his own good. And also too stupid. He heard a witch screaming for help and he raced off on his own to save her.” Alastor looked pointedly at Harry who had the good sense to at least blush in embarrassment. “And the Shunpike brothers ain’t too strong magically. Kyle knew he wasn’t going to be able to fire more than a half-dozen curses before he’d be done for the night. So he talked to the Weasley twins.”

“Oh no,” Hermione already had a bad feeling about this.

“Those Weasleys are something else. I don’t know where they got the idea from, but they invented a wand that’s pre-loaded with 30 piercing spells. Even got a handle on it and sights to make hitting things easier. You still gotta say ‘Piercio!’ each time you wanna cast, but you don’t need much magic power to cast. Once the 30 spells are gone, you hit a button on the handle, a cartridge drops out, and you load a new cartridge with 30 more spells. And then they painted them black to look scary. They call it an AR-1911.”

Hermione, Harry, and Colin (cause he’s still around in case they need another muggleborn) all face-palmed. 

“Ministry’s already working on banning them. As if banning self defense would ever be possible. They say painting them black was a step too far!” Alastor laughed before sobering up at the next thought. “Anyway, Kyle’s out there all alone. He had an incendio and an Avada Kedavra—the real thing, not that eye popper—cast at him before he returned fire with piercing spells. Four of them, to be exact. Got the bastard too! In fact, he got three of the four bastards attacking him before the aurors apparated in!”

“Well, that’s great!” Harry chimed in. “Why so mopey then? Did he die too?”

“Nope. That bastard Fudge ordered him arrested and charged before the Death Eater bodies even made it to St Mungo’s. And I saw the Death Eaters he got. All horrible people. But ‘upstanding citizens’ to Fudge!”

“Fu-” Whether Harry said “Fudge” or something else was unclear as Kreacher chose that moment to drop a pan loudly. 

“Which reminds me. We gotta get you two registered to vote. You’ll need to vote for Dumbledore in November so we can kick that gibbering idiot, Fudge to the curb.”

Harry frowned.

“I know, lad. The man ain’t perfect and he’s made more than a few mistakes where you’re concerned, but he can at least form complete sentences. Unlike Fudge. That man may have taken one too many Confundus charms from Malfoy. He was giving a speech in the Wizengamot the other day and he started going on about getting into a fight in Hogwarts with someone named Corn Pop.” Moody shook his head.

“Oh yeah, boss. I did that research, like you asked and no one at Hogwarts in the seven years before or after him had a first or last name of ‘Corn’ or ‘Pop.’ It might be a nickname, but no professors currently alive could ever remember anyone with that name,” Tonks added.

Alastor waved off the failure. “It was a long shot. Fudge is barely able to string three coherent words together any more. Wouldn’t surprise me if Corn Pop never existed.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Voting irregularities

Chapter 4.

Hermione yawned and stretched as she came down the stairs of Headquarters. She had volunteered as a poll watcher to make sure there were no voting irregularities. It had meant a late night, but luckily everything had gone smoothly. She was looking forward to Dumbledore taking office and the insanity of the last few years fading into a bad memory.

She walked into the kitchen and found glum faces where she had expected happiness and even celebration. “What happened?” she asked with trepidation.

Harry passed over the Daily Profit and she read the Headline.

_VOLDEMORT NEW GOD-EMPEROR OF MAGICAL WORLD_

“What!??!” she screamed with enough volume that she would have woken Sirius’s mother, if they hadn’t found a way to kill her painting. “That’s impossible!”

“Fraid not, luv,” John Dawlish drawled. He was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea, with his boots up on the table.

“I was THERE, _Auror Dawlish_ ,” Hermione managed to make his name sound like an insult. “We stopped counting at midnight. The vote was 6,120 to 3,223.” She remembered as she was slightly disappointed that Dumbledore had been so close to winning by a 2 to 1 margin and just barely missed it. “There was exactly one write-in ballot for Voldemort.” She suspected it was his own vote.

“Yeah but then 20,000 ballots came in for Voldemort at 4 AM this morning,” countered Dawlish.

“Exactly 20,000? They’re obviously fake. Just throw them out.”

Dawlish shook his head. “They’re not fake. They came in a box marked ‘Totally Not Fake Ballots.’ So, you see? There’s nothing to do but accept it. ‘Sides, the Profit already crowned him ‘God-Emperor’ this morning.”

“John,” Hermione began in a tone of voice reserved for extremely slow children you were trying not to throttle. “There are only around 10,000 magical people in all of Great Britain and 90% of them voted. There aren’t enough people for there to be another 20,000 ballots. It’s fraud!”

“Well, you obviously didn’t read far enough, then,” said Dawlish, pointing to the paper in her hands.

Hermione skimmed further down and read what she found aloud. “’There is no proof of voter fraud and anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a traitor.’ What? How can they preemptively say ‘there’s no proof’? We haven’t had a chance to show our evidence. Besides the fact that there are too many obviously fake ballots. And since when does the Daily Profit crown God-Emperors, anyway? That’s not even a thing!”

“They haven’t before,” Luna chimed in. “Usually, they just repeat the Ministry’s announcement of whatever winners there were of each election. But this election was special. They have to make sure the people know and—more importantly—know not to question this election. Don’t worry though. Daddy’s preparing a special edition exposing everything. Right down to the Rotfang conspiracy.”

“He is, is he?” Dawlish sat up. “Excuse me, I- uh think I left my floo on,” he said as he rushed out.

“When did Dawlish even join the Order?” Hermione asked, but received only shrugs.

* * *

Hermione held a crying Luna while Ron comforted an inconsolable Xenophilius. Personally, she felt she got the better end of that deal. Especially compared to the Lovegoods, who just had both their home and business burned to the ground in one fell swoop.

Harry had found a piece of parchment nailed to the still-standing door (though nothing but the door and frame were still upright). “By order of the Ministry of Truth—Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Truthiness—the publication known as The Quibbler has been found guilty, in a secret trial, of printing misinformation, fake news, and general un-truthiness; and are hereby blocked from printing their hateful content and malicious lies forever more.”

“Arrgh!!!!!!” Hermione yelled to the grey sky overhead. “1984 was not supposed to be a playbook!” Once she had calmed down a bit, it was Luna’s turn to comfort her. Or maybe they comforted each other. Not that way, you perverts. At least not yet, and not in this story.

“What will you do now?” Hermione asked.

Luna wrinkled her nose. “I suppose we’ll print the truth on Teen Witch Weekly’s magical printing press. They don’t look that closely at what’s being printed, so I doubt they could censor us there if they tried. But there’s a reason it’s known as ‘The Pit.’ I’m just sad to see The Quibbler come to an end like this.”

* * *

Ministerial Decree 665:

By order of Delores Umbridge, Almost Senior under the under-secretary down-the-hall-secretary to the Minister of Truthiness.

There is a new, invisible, form of Dragon Pox going around. Death rates have been as high as 0.001%. Therefore, in the interest of public safety, all public gatherings of more than 3 people are hereby banned forever. Or until you all stop questioning who won the last election.

Exceptions include: burning down buildings, looting, rioting, celebrating our new God-Emperor, those who espouse proper values, and government employees suppressing the rights of those who disagree with us.

Laughing, having fun, and smiling are all hereby banned forever as those actions may spread the virus. There are no outward signs of this virus, so most of you will never know if you have it or not. Living in fear forevermore is recommended.

Look forward to Ministerial Decree 666, where we explain to you how you can show your support for the Ministry of Truth and protect yourself from this invisible, killer virus that only kills Dumbledore’s supporters when they’re out supporting Dumbledore.

* * *

_“We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that the Daily Profit produces. But we're concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common from ‘alternative media sources.’ More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories... stories that just aren't true, without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think'...This is extremely dangerous to a democracy. At The Daily Profit, it’s our responsibility to pursue and report the truth. We understand Truth is neither politically 'left nor right' but instead must be completely in support of our new God-Emperor. Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever. We work very hard to seek the truth and strive to be fair, balanced and factual... We consider it our honor, our privilege to responsibly deliver the news every day.”_

\- Mendacity Sinclair. Editor for the Daily Profit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Google “extremely dangerous to our democracy” if you want to see something that’s REALLY dangerous to our democracy.


End file.
